Aargh, more technical difficulties! I didn't realize how low the batteries on the mics were and couldn't find more, and they all died, receivers and transmitters. Hopefully the receivers died first and the camera switched to its internal microphone. At least I took really detailed notes (4 pages of them)!
Stamatis led the class tonight, and it was a very different kind of class than usual. I was not involved in the planning and didn't know what he was going to do ahead of time, so the class unfolded a bit like a mystery novel for me.
He started with a demo in which he put a tube of liquid nitrogen into water and it started spinning, and then asked people to figure out what was happening with the energy in this situation. After some discussion, he reminded them of the discussion of "features" of energy and asked what kind of questions, in terms of what features, they asked themselves when trying to figure out what what was going on. He said they were trying to think of a name for this type of question and needed help. I'm not sure I quite understood what this was about.
Then we switched to watching a video from the Hammer and Van Zee book of students discussing what would happen if you cut the string on the pendulum at its highest point. He prefaced the video with "Tonight we’re going to go to a different kind of video. We’re not going to be thinking so much about student ideas, but about the students themselves as human beings." Several people laughed at this comment, and I'm not sure why. Then he hit play and we watched for 10 minutes. After the video, he said, "The question I’m dying to ask is: “Which student do you like the most and why?" People really didn't want to answer the question. One group said they couldn't answer it because they hadn't been watching with that question in mind, they'd been paying attention to classroom culture. So Stamatis showed the video again so they could watch with that question in mind. And they still refused to answer the question. Stamatis kept pushing them and eventually one person volunteered their favorite and then a few more people. The point of all this, according to Stamatis, was to look at what values were inherent in their choices. Then someone said she thought about it in terms of who she calls on in class and this launched everybody into a long discussion about who we call on in class and why. And then everybody started talking about what they liked about the classroom in the video. This discussion was relevant to the topic of what values inform our teaching, but it seemed like it undid months of training to focus on student ideas and not evaluate the lesson. Or maybe it just cut through the very thin veneer of restraint they acquired over the last few months.
Then Stamatis showed them the "Initial findings from the Measures of Effective Teaching Project" and they discussed how it's important to think about your own values in teaching and the values of administrators making decisions about education.
Stamatis ended by asking them whether they wanted to watch more video of each others' classrooms, as a segue into trying to convince them to sign up to be videotaped because we need volunteers. I did know this part was coming, and was disappointed in the response. Nobody jumped up to say that watching video had been really valuable for them. A couple people said, "Or? What's the alternative?" which I guess could be interpreted as, "Of course we're going to do that, why wouldn't we?" or it could be interpreted as, "Can we do something else please?" Lisa 2 said "I want to see more video of people I don’t know, but I don’t want the discomfort of seeing people I know." Margaret said after watching the video from Matt's class she had gone home and asked her students the same questions and was really excited to see that they responded in the same way as Matt's students. She said she'd love to do activities where they all ask their students the same questions and then come back and talk about them. This sounds to me like what teachers proposed in the AYPD last year, but never really did. Then Nina said, "I’d be disappointed if I didn’t get to see my video, and I’d love to see other people’s." That was the most positive response we got about the video.
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